The family has been an ever changing entity. It has steadily lost focus in modern society. In addition to losing focus in society, the family has also steadily changed in size. A variety of changes have been attributed to the average size of the family over the past view decades. My thesis will be something similar to the following sentence: Since the 1950's the overall size of the family has decreased throughout the generations due to a variety of major social changes and a pushes to break long held traditions.
For the essay I will focus on going through the generations and going over the size of the family. As the years go by, the family steadily grows smaller until present day. After going through the generations I will explain the causes that influenced such a major change. These influences include how pop culture reflected family size with popular television series like Happy Days or Modern Family. The growing divorce rate, increase in contraception use, and the growing commonality of both parents working also has greatly impacted the focus of the family, and therefore the size of the family. Much of the information I use will be statistics regarding the sizes of the family. Other facts such as divorce rates, contraception statistics and other related information will play an important role in supporting this shift.
Current Source List:
Family Studies Institute
Pew Research Center
Bureau of Labor Statistics
United States Census Bureau
The New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/health/families.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Public Broadcasting System
Hi Tim, great idea. I think your personal connection to this topic will make it more interesting to you and your audience. Also, if you have time, I think it would be valuable for you to explain some of the negative effects of having a smaller family. You kind of get at it when you say that the family has lost focus in society. I think more elaboration would make your essay more interesting.
ReplyDeleteHey Tim, this is a great idea how you organize your thoughts. But as Lisa said early, it would be nice if you add the negative effects of having a smaller family. Furthermore, have some time to write some parts in the conclusion, how will you going to sum up your ending prior to the thesis.
ReplyDeleteTim! I swear you have all the answers! You use your personal life to connect back to a deeper topic of a paradigm shift. That is very impressive. Because of this, I am not surprised that you WILL rock that TED talk and do highly on your essay! Great start, I approve of this message. - Khalil Dunham-Carson
ReplyDeleteTim, this is an interesting shift to trace! A few observations (in bullet point form):
ReplyDelete- I don't know what you mean when you say the family has "steadily lost focus in modern society." This is vague. Can you be more precise?
- I think you inserted "a" in your thesis when it isn't necessary. Also, what are the long-held traditions that are being broken?
- Do you think you'll actually need to trace this in pop culture TV shows, or is this more of a side thought at the moment? Sure, some older shows might have reflected larger families and some current shows might reflect smaller families, but is this germane to the specific thesis you're advancing? (Maybe so, but I'm not sure yet based on its current iteration.) Perhaps keep this on the side burner for right now.
I hope this helps!
Side note: my dad was one of six kids in his family, which was common then, but I can't quite fathom having this large of a family a generation later. I certainly agree that a shift has happened. There always will be outliers -- small families in the past and large families now -- but the trend has shifted toward fewer kids, for certain.